A leading progressive House Democrat is commending President Biden’s sweeping commutation order for people on the federal death row, calling the death penalty itself “racist.”
“The President’s decision to commute the death sentences of 37 individuals on federal death row is a historic and groundbreaking act of compassion that will save lives, address the deep racial disparities in our criminal legal system, and send a powerful message about redemption, decency, and humanity,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., said in a statement on Monday.
“The death penalty is a racist, flawed, and fundamentally unjust punishment that has no place in any society.”
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Pressley argued the death penalty has overwhelmingly targeted Black and Brown communities “and failed to make America any safer.”
The Massachusetts lawmaker, a member of the hardline-left group of House Democrats dubbed the “Squad,” has been on the forefront of the progressive push to abolish the death penalty.
Biden’s clemency order affects nearly everyone on the federal death row in the United States.
Just three of 40 inmates remain – Dylann Roof, who murdered nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina in 2015; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was found guilty for carrying out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshipers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018.
Among those whose sentences were commuted to life imprisonment are Thomas Sanders, who kidnapped and killed a 12-year-old girl; Jorge Avila-Torrez, who sexually assaulted and stabbed two young girls to death and strangled a 20-year-old female Naval officer four years later; and Anthony Battle, who murdered an Atlanta prison guard with a hammer 30 years ago.
Democrats had been mounting pressure on Biden to use his clemency powers after the controversial and broad pardon he granted to his son, Hunter Biden, just weeks before he was expected to be sentenced on federal gun charges.
Biden heeded that pressure earlier this month when he commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 Americans in the largest such single-day order.
It comes as President-elect Trump has touted plans for months to expand the death penalty to drug traffickers, child rapists and illegal immigrants who kill U.S. citizens.
At the tail end of his first term, Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) performed the first federal executions in 20 years, carrying out sentences for 13 federal prisoners on death row.
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Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., a top Trump ally, blasted Biden for his order on Monday.
“Once again, Democrats side with depraved criminals over their victims, public order, and common decency,” Cotton wrote on X.
“Democrats can’t even defend Biden’s outrageous decision as some kind of principled, across-the-board opposition to the death penalty since he didn’t commute the three most politically toxic cases. Democrats are the party of politically convenient justice.”
